Mikes Blog

April 1st is going to be my final and last attempt at quitting smoking.  I shall fail this time.  I have been trying to quit for a long time.  After 18 years of smoking my lungs are finally telling me to stop smoking.

This time I am giving myself a little incentive.  After one year of being smoke free, I shall buy myself this…

A 2010 4Runner Trail Edition.  What I am going to do is, take all the money I would have spent from smoking and put it into a savings account.  After one year, that will apply for my down payment.

So mark my words this IS going to happen.

For those of you looking for an update on what is going on here at the Mayo clinic.   The reason we came down is we have been doubting the original Polymiositis diagnosis for quit some time now.  Everything we have read on the disease, the homework we have done, and the comments of Dr Pissdrunk (Pestrunk) have just made us question what really is going on with Mary.  So we came down here to the Mayo seeking information, verification, and/or a new diagnosis second opinion.  Thus far, it seems we were correct in thinking that Mary has been misdiagnosed although the doctors haven’t exactly said it in those words yet.  However, they have been using phrases like “A lot of red flags against it…” , ” This doesn’t look like any Poly I have ever seen…”, “Poly is inflamatory, and you don’t appear to be inflamatory…”, and “This does not appear to be a myopathy but more of a dystrophy”.  Which all this to me says “We do not think this is Polymiositis, we are unsure of what it is, but we can pretty much tell you its not Poly.”

Hopefully after the comparative muscle biopsy on monday we will be able to tell more of whats going on.  They want a new biopsy as well as a to look at the the original biopsy from Missou when Mary was 13.  How does all this make me feel?  Well I am happy that we might actually find out what this is and the possibility of new treatments that might work is very exciting.  The scary part is how damaged has Mary’s muscles been over the last 14 years from this apparent misdiagnosis?  Which allows the question, if Dr Pissdrunk had diagnosed correctly what was going on instead of just guessing(I say guessing, because of what has happened here this week, comments made here show that with all the evidence in front of him he ignored it) could Mary have had some semblance of a regular life?

Hopefully when finding what this is, we will have the answers, and maybe a way to get Mary back to almost normal.  We can only hope.  But the prospect seems to be there.  They have pulled Mary off of her treatments, and kicked back her medications.  Citing they are doing nothing and could possibly be doing more harm than good at this point.  So in a nutshell, that is where we are.  Still unsure, but unsure with hope.  It will be a few weeks before we know the outcome of the biopsy’s, but like I said, hopefully we will have something.

That is where we are at.  The biopsy will be done monday, then hopefully we can be on our way back and make it back home by Christmas evening.

So we are still here in Arizona; I do have to say it is very beautiful here, and I would seriously consider moving here for the winters.  I might even consider actually moving here full time as long as first availability I would be able to buy a house in Canada to counter the extremely HOT summers here.  I think that is a fair trade…

The scenery here is truly breath taking, and I could totally imagine buying a house somewhere in the mountains.  The thought of watching these sunsets every night off of my back deck completely agrees with me.  The only thing I cant get out of my mind, however, is since there is no grass here, where would the dogs go potty?  I think they would be confused as to where to go, and the image of one of them lifting a leg on a cactus here makes my ass pucker for them.

So anyways, early monday morning we will back at the mayo for the Biopsy, then hopefully we can get on our way back home.  Not looking forward to the 22 hour plus drive home.  Honestly I cant wait to get back home.  So much do to, get me office done, finish Christmas shopping, Christmas, and get ready for the next semester of school.

Merry Christmas to all, and hopefully the Christmas cards will arrive shortly before the end of the year.  Trust me you will like them, they are awesome this year.

For those of you that don’t make it over to Mary’s blog to much, here are a couple of links to a couple of paintings she put up on Ebay.  So if you like them PLEASE PLEASE bid on them and get one!  Christmas is coming and I know you have somebody in mind that needs a little more art on their Wall!

Alone in the Mist

Tuscan Garden

Sorry its been a while since posting.  I have just been SOOOO busy.  Typically spending my spare moments downstairs working.  Not much is going on really.  The air is crisp which always puts a spring in my step.  I love colder weather.  This quarter in school is going to be tuff.  A LOT of writing.  So please dont expect to many posts till around Christmas.  Between both of my classes I will have atleast four writing assignments to work on each week.  Although I am excited about my Enviromental Science class.  It seems like it is going to be a lot of fun, very intersting, as well as eye opening.

As far as my office downstairs. It is comming along nicely I got the lighting up and wired,  It looks VERY nice. However I have one that does not work, and another that hums when I try to dim it.  So I will have to look into those before I start putting up any sheet rock.  I used recessed lighting so once they are rocked in, you are they better work or you have to cut HUGE wholes into your ceilling.  I have my cable outlets wired and in, and most all the framing.  The walls are actually in,  I just have to build a box in feature to box in my heating duct.  So after getting that finished, fixing my two lights that are screwy and putting up my vapor barrier, I should be able to start tossing some rock onto the walls.  After that all I have is carpet, trim then paint.  So I think I am beyond that half way point.   I am so excited to get this finished; I cant wait to have my own office and personal space agian.  I haven’t had that since we moved back from Gladstone.  Mary took one of the spare bedrooms as a studio for her and the other is the bird room.  So I really have no personal space in this house.

Other notes of interest.  I think my AV reciever is finally going capoot.  Its not pushing any signal to the sub-woofer.  Hopefully it is, that will give me a reason to finally upgrade to a nice gently used Rotel unit.  If I am able to that, it should make my B&W’s shine rather nicely.  I noticed something wasn’t right with the sound.  But I couldn’t put my finger on it, until last night when Steve was over and actually said something about the Sub not working.  Then the bell went off in my head.

Finally trying to put Steve’s HTPC togather.  I think he has a bad MOBO, trouble is he has had this MOBO for a year, and it is out of warrenty even though it has never been used.  I got it assembled but I cant get a POST out of it, and no beeps.  Everything I have found says its the MOBO.  Tell you what, I used be a HUGE ASUS fan, but lately they have really been dissapointing.  A lot of bad product lately.  Gigabyte however has been rock solid.  If I have to order him a new Mobo, we are going with Gigabyte.

Oh and the MacBook Pro, I ended up parting out and putting on Ebay.  The service center I took it to wouldn’t fix it.  Apperantly it Milk had been spilled on it.  How they found that I dont know.  But it is what it is.  So pulled apart and put on ebay it went.  So hopefully I can find another MBP for myself of Mary, because mine is getting really old.  Doens’t shut anymore, and just wierd things are happening all the time.  It works, just not that well anymore.  But I cant complain about a seven year old laptop.  It has provided lots of great service, and should still bring a few pennies on the parts market.

Not really getting much done as far as the basement goes, or even cleaning.  I did get the grocery’s done.  So when I am done with this I will put them away.  I am writing and letting some Stevie Ray Vaughn try to motivate me.  After this weekend I am just dog tired.  I think all the sun just zapped everything out of me.  But boy did I sleep well last night…aside for Kendall taking to his waking me up at 2am agian.  I don tknow what his deal is.  I think maybe he just prefers it outside at night.

Well one more week and school starts agian.   Hopefully I can get some sort of room downstairs finished enough for a study/office area.  I would like to atleast have the drywall up.  But at the pace I am going, and with Mary wanting to have another garage sale this weekend.  I dont think so.  I really dont want to have a garage sale this weekend.  One weekend of waking at the crack of dawn was enough.  But oh well.

I better go get those groceries put away.

Ohhh I love Pride and Joy,  thats what Stevie is playing now.

…more like moving to Canada as I do right now.  A socialized healthcare system would ensure that EVERYBODY in this supposed great nation would have health care, nomatter how sick you are.  All those people that have Cancer, MD, AIDS, MS, or whatever they have, wouldn’t have to worry about paying for medical bills, or how to pay for the next treatment that will make them feel just a little bit better for a while.

As most of you know my wife as a disease called Polymiositis.  It is a disease that attacks her muscles, with out treatment and medical attention her body would pretty much become useless.  I am sick and tired of hearing all these right wing-hate radio personalities say we have the best health care system in the world.  I ask how is that?  When a person cannot get the medical attention they need with out losing EVERYTHING they own and care for?  Such as Mary’s case.  We make to much money to be allowed to use Medicaid, because of a family business.  Her employer offers health insurance, but cannot offer it to her, because his rates will go up substantially.  Her Brother who owns a large company here in Missouri cannot help her because of the same issue.  I am a full time studant and have no health insurance myself.  So the solution is to use the equity we have built in our home to pay for medical expenses.  That is fine that may give us a year of expenses.  Yes its that much.  And with the housing crush we are in, what then?  We lose our home six months after that, with ruined credit.  Now we are left with no home, bad credit, no way to get the medical attention we need, and most likely a pending divorce because I as the husband cant provide what my family needs.

The other option is for me to get out of school, forget my dreams of being an architect, and go to work somewhere that will hopefully be a large enough company that the incursion of medical expenses from Mary wont get us dropped after a year(after their benifit renewel) or worse fired because they had to find a way to get Mary off of their policy in an effort to save money.

My question is, it seems like the largest complaint against socialized health care is that people will have to wait longer in the doctors office.  Really?  Is that such an inconvenience that you would rather deny somebody who needs help or treatment because you dont want to spend an extra 20 minutes in the office?

There really is nothing worse than watching your wife, the person you love most in your life, get worse and worse, and stop doing things that she would normally love because she physically cant do it.  All the while knowing that there is no way to pay for treatments she needs for the next year or for the rest of her life, that may provide some sort of relief and life back to her.

All I have to say is that if something is not done about health care and getting it to EVERYBODY in this country, we will be moving to Canada or some place that does provide it to its citizens.  Some how some way.

Health Care is NOT a Privilage! Its a RIGHT!

I took a laptop up to Macxprts in Columbia to get it worked on.  Its symptoms were really slow to boot from the HD.  So I attempted to reload the HD.  No go,  put in a new HD into the Blackbook, no go, I actually tried 2 seperate HDD’s one of them brand new!  No go.

So I take it to a supposed Mac service center.  Explained the entire situation to him.  And you know he didn’t listen to one word I told him.  I knew he wasn’t because I got the typical tech “Hmmm um” as I talked.  He booted off of a firewire drive and it worked great.  I also did that.  That was how I narrowed down to the SATA controller on the logic board.  I am no software expert.  Trust me,  if I have to many problems that are not hardware related my first fix is a complete reload of software.  But I am VERY good at hardware troubleshooting.  I have always had a good mechanical head.  I can and have listened to computers, smelled them and been able to tell you exactly what is going on.  And what to fix.  At At&T they called me the Human O-Scope.

Oh well,  they will not listen to me.  I can talk till I am blue in the face and never get my point across to them.  Hopefully it will be a learning experience for the guy who is working on it.  Its just to bad he will prolly have my computer for a little over 2 weeks.  Which sucks for me since I REALLY need to sell it.

Is it because I am older, and seemingly come from a different school of thought about class etiquette, or am I just crazy?

But when did it become okay to just converse when class is in progress, or to argue with the teacher? I don’t get it. We are here to learn, and I pay for this out of my own pocket. For the love of God, Shut the Fuck Up!!!

So I watched Knight Rider yesterday along with Life.  If you have an Itunes accounts you can download them for free.  As well as other new upcomming TV shows and fall premiers.

First I have to say I LOVED Life.  I cant wait to see what this season has in store for us.  As far as Knight Rider….well that is another story.

I liked the Movie that aired last year.  A couple of small issues.  But all in all it was a good movie.  I felt they had done Knight Rider right with the reimagination or continuation how ever you want to look at it.  They didn’t overcheese KITT up.  So to my suprise within the first 3 minutes of the new series they did exactly that.

I thought the Nano technology covering Kitts skin to change color’s and all was great.  And a little transformation is okay.  But the TOTAL body tranformations?  Really.  Leave that to the real Transformers. If your gonna go that far, give him a Robot body to trasform into, get rid of the new Michael Knight, and send Kitt on his way.   All in all it was okay.  The cheese factor was little over the top for me.  And I am ussually okay with a little bit of Cheese.  But it was a bit stupid.  The original show didn’t even have that much Cheese.